


checkmate (or thereabouts)

by arcadianwriter (noxstories)



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canon Compliant, Character Study, DREAM GOT BOXED LIKE A FISH LMAOO, Dream In Prison, Introspection, Prison Arc, character introspection, he's got a LOT of problems to work through lmao, listen c! dream is so interesting. i can't help being fascinated by him lmao, more tba as the plot progresses!!, no beta we die like schlatt <3, spoilers for dream smp finale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28884834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxstories/pseuds/arcadianwriter
Summary: “How long do you think you can keep this up, Dream?” Punz asks him, and Dream stiffens like he’s been stabbed.Or,Dream is imprisoned. One by one, he receives visitors he can't run from anymore.
Comments: 192
Kudos: 781





	1. golden wishes

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to ANOTHER dream smp fic !! i am in WAY over my head,, my piles of uni work are screaming at me,, but i watched tonight's stream and couldn't resist!! c! dream is one of my favourite characters of all time and i'm constantly writing and analysing him, and had to write something like this.
> 
> i hope you enjoy!! first up is punz - i have literally never written or watched punz in my life, so this is very experimental, but hopefully it'll get stronger as i go!!

Nobody visits for two weeks.

Not a long time, in the span of a god’s lifetime, but things are so fast-paced in his world, one tiny rock leading to an avalanche, and Dream finds that two weeks can stretch out agonisingly long when nothing happens. Time crawls by slower than a snail, and there are only so many things he can do to distract himself from the nagging thought that maybe, just once, he’d fucked up irreparably.

He’s used to the feeling of being a villain, hell, he’d grown used to that title before the first war ended, back when he’d been unsure and hesitant and almost as much of a child of war as Tommy and Tubbo themselves. Back then, Wilbur had been Dream’s main adversary, the jigsaw piece that refused to stay in its place. Back _then,_ attachment had been something Dream had given freely - but Tommy… Tommy had come along, given _attachment_ new meaning, new dangers.

And so he’d slipped into the skin of a villain. It had suited him nicer than being powerless.

Attachment had been wiped out - it had been to his benefit back then.

It works to his detriment now.

Dream screams himself hoarse in prison until his voice gives out. Nobody hears, and if they do, nobody answers. He hadn’t expected them to. And he thinks that maybe this isn’t something that can be fixed with manipulation and tricks.

Nobody visits for two weeks, and for the first time in too long, Dream finds himself properly alone, with nothing to do but think about his own thoughts.

  
  


Surprisingly to everyone, or perhaps unsurprisingly, Punz is the first to visit.

Dream is glad about this, because he’s not in a good state, and he wants nobody to see him but Punz, who has seen him at his lowest and his highest and had been thoroughly unimpressed by either. He admires Punz in a way he can’t explain - maybe it’s the man’s inability to seem shaken by anything, or maybe it’s the utter detachment he displays in regards to the server as a whole. He doesn’t care particularly about the people, he doesn’t care particularly for anything other than money and for his own safety. Dream has always cared too much. Punz cares too little. They’d been a perfect team.

Dream had messed up by assuming that Punz would stay on his side.

“Hey, Dream,” Punz greets him that day, not even batting an eye at the bloodied knuckles or at the corner his former boss is hunched in, “long time, no see.”

Dream’s head jerks up, but doesn’t move other than this. His heart is racing; for one hopeful moment, he wonders if Punz is here to rescue him.

But Punz has never been a hero, nor has he pretended to be one. And Dream isn’t desperate enough to want to be _saved_ yet, either: this isn’t a fairytale, this doesn’t end with a bow on top, he knows that. His life is messy and he is a bad, bad person. He doesn’t get a happily-ever-after, and he isn’t delusional enough to think that way either. So he exhales, low and rough, and meets Punz’s eyes behind his mask.

“Long time, no see,” he echoes, like a broken record. Punz smiles. 

“I was going to come sooner, but… You left a bit of a wreck out there.” Dream doesn’t know if by _‘out there’_ he means with the land or with the people, so he doesn’t reply. Punz continues. “And, I’ll be honest, the prison is a little daunting. I didn’t exactly want to come.”

Dream can understand this. So he scoffs, the sound ragged in his raw throat. “I don’t want you here either,” he confesses, and it’s a lie, but Punz knows this, because Punz seems to know everything, because maybe two weeks in solitary confinement is wearing on his ability to lie, so sue him, “what do you want?”

Punz looks at him for a moment. “You know,” he comments idly, “it’s pretty sad you think the only reason anyone would come and visit you is because they want something.”

He’s not here to be psychoanalysed. Groaning, ignoring the nausea twisting his stomach into knots and raking his hands through his hair, Dream finally gets to his feet, remaining in his corner, safe, secure. Solitary. “What do you _want?”_ He repeats again, firmer, heat behind his words for the first time. 

“I don’t know.” Punz shrugs simply, but doesn’t look bothered by his own ignorance. “One day, I think I’d like to understand.”

Dream frowns behind his mask. “Understand what?” 

“Well, everything,” Punz tells him, “but I don’t think you’re ready yet. Are you?”

When had everyone around him become so vague and hard to read? Dream resists crossing the room and slamming his fist into Punz’s face, because despite the instant satisfaction it would bring him, he can see the wicked glint of Punz’s sword gleaming in his hand, and he’s too dangerously close to death as it is. The thought of dying permanently causes an icy hand of terror to seize his heart, and keeps Dream firmly as far away from his visitor as much as he possibly can. 

Punz sighs when he doesn’t answer, and Dream is reminded that he has good memories with the man - few, but valuable, like gold, like the obsidian he’s surrounded with. Good memories aren’t supposed to mean anything to him, but he holds onto them like a child anyway; he’s Peter Pan, the boy that never grew up, clinging to reminders of his humanity and screaming into the void _please don’t take them away, please, please don’t make me give up more than I’ve already lost._ His memories with Punz are, for the most part, bland and brief: paying the man for his services, planning with him, orchestrating his plans and making sure everything was perfect. Waking up after falling asleep one morning at Punz’s house to find a blanket draped over him. Paying Punz more than he’d agreed because he wanted to say thank you. Sitting in amicable silence when the loudness in his own mind got too much. 

The memories aren’t the brightest, they aren’t the happiest, but they’re something. They’re a shade closer to the _attachment_ that Dream is so fascinated by, that Dream is so disgusted by. And nobody, not even Tommy Innit himself, can take memories from him. So he’s not scared to cling to them.

Better than clinging to discs. To people, who always leave, who never last.

“How long do you think you can keep this up, Dream?” Punz asks him, and Dream stiffens like he’s been stabbed. It’s a very good question.

“I won’t be in here forever,” he says carefully, cautious of his own words, “this is a temporary measure.”

Because they have to let him out at some point, don’t they? They can’t keep him forever. He’s the world owner, and he’s important - they’ll let him out or someone will betray them or he’ll crawl out of the damn prison himself. His imprisonment is temporary. _Temporary._

_(“It’s a temporary thing,” Dream assures George about the war, “as soon as L’Manburg is gone, we can go back to peace, I promise.”)_

_(“No, no, L’Manburg isn’t independent.” His laugh is as sharp as his axe when he tells Sapnap of his plans. “It’s temporary. It’ll be destroyed soon, you’ll see.”)_

_(“This isn’t permanent,” he whispers to himself, eyes stinging as he watches the Community House burn, “it was always temporary.”)_

_(He ignores that temporary is always a lie, and a weak one at that.)_

Punz frowns for the first time, looking at Dream like he can see what’s passing through his head. “Dream,” he says slowly, steadily, “you’ve done a lot of bad things, man. I don’t see you getting out of here any time soon. Not unless you start changing back to who you used to be.”

It’s funny to hear that, and Dream almost laughs. It’s funny, because he wishes he could go back to who he used to be - light grey, apathetic, enjoying summer days with his friends and caring for nothing. It’s funny, because back then, he remembers wishing he could be what he is now - darker, cold, alone, an imposing figure. Attached. He hadn’t known or understood the concept back then. He’d loved his friends, and he’d loved his pets, but they hadn’t been attachments. 

He understands attachment now, as a concept. He’s read the books; written a few himself. He’s watched everyone in the SMP form attachments, he’s watched himself form attachments, he’s watched himself destroy them all, one by one. 

He understands attachment now. He wishes to God he didn’t.

“I haven’t changed,” Dream says, because he’s never been able to stomach the truth.

Punz shrugs, because he’s never been able to lie to Dream. “You have,” he replies simply, “but I’m not here to debate you. I’m here to say goodbye.” At Dream’s sudden attentive curiosity, he chuckles. “I’m leaving the SMP for a bit. Not completely: I’m taking a boat, and I’m going exploring. There’s so much out there that we haven’t seen yet. Maybe there’s even more resources, more gold.”

He shoots Dream a sideways smile that’s only the slightest bit regretful.

“You know I like gold.”

Dream does know. He steps closer to Punz, who doesn’t move away. It’s almost a surprise before Dream remembers that he’s not a threat anymore. Nobody sees him as a threat.

It makes his legs buckle. 

“Will you come back?”

“I don’t know,” Punz admits, “I don’t know if I want to. This isn’t the server I thought it was going to be.”

Dream chokes down his own words, his howl of _I know,_ his snarl of _if you hadn’t betrayed me, it could be, I could have fixed this, I could have remade it into something better._ It’s of no use in his cell. The obsidian doesn’t care, and neither does Punz. “Okay,” he breathes out, and something in him withers and dies, the same something that froze when Alyssa had said the same thing to him, all those months ago, “I get it.”

“So I guess this is it.” Punz steps back, and Dream almost begs him to stay. “I’d say it was nice working with you, but…”

 _Say it,_ Dream wants to say, _please._

Instead, Punz lets the silence hang in the air, heavy, potent.

“If I come back, I’ll come and visit you, yeah?”

Dream turns away from his visitor. 

“Don’t you dare,” he says, “I don’t need pity visitors.”

And he remembers Tommy, infuriating, annoying, childish, vibrant Tommy, who he’d come so close to breaking in exile.

 _I don’t want their pity gifts, Dream,_ he’d said to him, and Dream had used that pride to break him further. 

Punz doesn’t, though. Punz doesn’t say anything. And when Dream turns back around, he’s gone, as if he had never been there in the first place. 

Dream slides back to the ground, hair clenched in a white-knuckle grip, and falls asleep.

Punz isn’t there when he wakes up. There is no blanket over him to keep him from the cold chill in his bones. There’s only walls of obsidian and quiet.


	2. sic semper tyrannis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re not going to fix anything here, Tubbo,” Dream tells him, voice steeped in tension, “if you think you’re going to be some magical fix to this, you’re wrong.”
> 
> “I know,” Tubbo says simply, “but everything’s worth a try, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> second chapter pog!!! this was a lot of fun to write, and is now accurate to the layout of the prison - holy SHIT, the canonical prison is absolutely terrifying, sam did so well making it!!!! however, this is now (probably) canon divergent; in this fic, tommy doesn't visit dream straight away, but everything else is canon!! :)
> 
> i hope you enjoy - tubbo is a super interesting character, and his relationship/dynamic with dream is fascinating!!

After that, the visitors come and go more regularly. Sam seems to work up the nerve to walk by his cell more often, never once talking to him, barely even looking at him - it’s only to give him food, too. But Dream soaks in his presence greedily like he’s the sunlight he hasn’t seen in two weeks, three weeks, a month, because it’s been a whole month in his cell if he’s calculating time right - and God knows if he is at this point, but it feels like it’s been forever. He counts the days by how often he needs to sleep (sleep, hah, he hasn’t slept in so long; perhaps prison is good for him after all) and by how often Sam comes by. As far as Dream’s calculations have figured out - and he has a lot of time to calculate - Sam patrols and gets food to him every second day; if that’s true, then he’s been in here for four weeks and three days, give or take. He's Julius Caesar, some small part of his brain giggles, amused at his plight and remembering a book he'd read as a child, he's Icarus, he's every Greek hero and tyrant and martyr and villain rolled into one. Technoblade would have a laugh at this: he probably already is. Dream entertains himself with the thought of his own cockiness: he is no Greek mythological figure. That's the worst part of it all.

...He's been in the prison long. Too long. He needs to start working out how to escape.

But it’s so hard to think when everything is so silent and his cell is so small. Dream has always, always been a restless soul, always on the move, never still - it’s impossible to parkour or run about in here, in his home, in his cell that barely gives him room to pace, never mind anything else. There are only so many times he can take the pain of burning in lava before he grows tired of it. He’s tried playing nice with Sam, calling out hoarsely to ask him to move rooms, to be allowed to stretch his legs outside his cell just once- Sam hadn’t looked at him, tossing in food with sure, swift footing without a glance. Dream hadn’t tried again. He knows a lost cause when he sees one. 

(He’s grown used to seeing one in the reflection of the water he respawns into every time he dies in the prison. A lost cause. He’s intimately familiar with the sight.)

Sam is pointless to request things from, so Dream takes to watching him from his corner of the cell when he appears, assessing him as much as he can for any information on how to escape. Any weaknesses he can exploit. He knows the intricacies of almost every other person on the server - alone, he could get inside any of their heads. But they’re not his guards. It’s Sam who is his captor, who he hadn’t bothered to properly learn about, under the mistaken belief Sam had been on his side. Or at least an ally.

Allies are such fleeting things, he’s come to realize, and his biggest error had been fooling himself to think otherwise.

Instead of thinking about his errors, though, and feeling the hot flush of something like shame run through his veins, he spends his time feeling strangely empty, and awaiting his next visitor.

It turns out to be Tubbo.

Dream _stares_ when the boy starts coming over on the bridge, standing uncertainly like he’s trying to fill someone else’s footsteps. Because of all people, he’d been sure Tubbo and Tommy, the ones he’d hurt the most, wouldn’t have ever come to visit him, especially not so soon. Caught off guard, all he can do is stare, lips slightly parted, and Tubbo actually cracks a smile at that through a healing busted lip and fading bruised jaw. 

He’d done that. He’s not Ranboo - his memory works almost perfectly, though he wishes otherwise right now.

“Hi,” Tubbo offers, when Dream can only stare, “you weren’t expecting someone else, were you?”

Dream thinks of Puffy, who had stared at him like he’d been a stranger when she’d come through the portal, and Sapnap, who had shielded Tubbo from Dream with a fierce expression on his face, and Ranboo who had been deadly silent and Technoblade who hadn’t showed up even when Dream had begged. 

“No,” he says eventually, “I wasn’t.”

And his voice is cracked from dehydration and his clothes are bigger than ever on him, but Tubbo sits cross legged on the ground next to the lava, looking for all the world like he’s come to visit an old friend. Dream stays standing. It’s not the position of power it used to be, and he feels stupid, inconsequential, powerless. Killing Tubbo, as easy as it would be - a push into lava, a hit to the chest, anything - is pointless at this point. He wants to ask why Tubbo’s here - if he’s come to kill him, if he’s come to demand Wilbur back, if he’s come to scream at him. 

“You don’t look so good,” Tubbo points out when the silence stretches thin, “you are being fed, right?”

Dream thinks disparagingly of his food. He’s never been the biggest fan of potatoes. 

“Cause this is- I mean-” Tubbo fumbles with his words, catches himself quickly. “This is a punishment, for sure, but it shouldn’t be torture. It shouldn’t be that level of bad, you know?”

It shouldn’t matter if it had been that bad. At least, it shouldn’t matter to Tubbo. The kid has been through hell - Dream knows this, he’s the hell. He knows how much pain and suffering he’s caused Tubbo, directly and indirectly. So why does Tubbo feign concern here at all?

Tubbo sees the look flicker over Dream’s face with breakneck speed, and shuffles just a little closer, encouragingly.

“You’re not going to fix anything here, Tubbo,” Dream tells him, voice steeped in tension, “if you think you’re going to be some magical fix to this, you’re wrong.”

“I know,” Tubbo says simply, “but everything’s worth a try, right?”

And that’s always been Tubbo’s attitude, hasn’t it? He’s always been open to _try_ \- trying to save L’Manburg, trying to help Pogtopia, trying to be President while his world crumbles around him. Tubbo is nothing but a trier, and Dream knows this, so why is he surprised at all about this? Why is he taken aback, why does he feel an icy hand seize his heart, why does sudden doubt plague his mind, a nagging _maybe you were wrong about them_ filling his head? 

“Not this.” His words are tight, controlled. It’s all he has left to control. “Not me.”

“Well, I guess we’ll see,” Tubbo says casually, “you might prove me wrong eventually. But I don’t have long here. Big Q is waiting outside.”

Sensing Dream’s unasked question, his optimism turns grim.

“He says he’ll visit you soon. I wouldn’t be looking forward to that if I were you.”

Swallowing, Dream sits down, mimicking Tubbo’s position: his muscles ache from standing and he’s so tired. Seeing this, Tubbo looks encouraged.

“I have a question, Dream, if you want to answer it.”

A question. No money, no favors, no goods or supplies, no manpower. Dream is used to viewing himself as a time bomb - it’s strange to hear that someone wants something more than that for the first time in a while. Somehow, this is scarier. “I don’t have to answer,” he says, in warning, in plea, in threat. 

“Course not.” Tubbo shrugs, before wincing, his hand jumping to his shoulder. Dream remembers putting a sword through it weeks ago. “I just- You never answered my question before. Back- _that_ day.”

He’s not imagining the tremor that courses through the boy’s hand that sweeps his hair out of his eyes, nor is he imagining the wobble in his voice, the hitch in his breath. Tubbo will never forget that day - Dream wonders if he’ll ever get _over_ that day, wonders if any of them really will. He’d been asked a lot of questions that day: _why are you doing this, what do you want, why can’t you leave us alone_ , he’s heard them all.

The trouble is, the only answers he has to give for those questions are lies. Might be lies. He’s grown unsure of his own reasons. He’s always been too good at making things up.

But Tubbo doesn’t ask these questions. Instead, fidgeting with his hands and looking around the black cell, he asks earnestly, “don’t you hurt from all you’ve done?”

Dream says nothing. There’s nothing to say. There’s only lies, which are impossible to say no matter how much he tries to convince himself of them, and the truth, which is even more impossible. Trapped between a rock and a hard place, Dream can only clutch his book closer to his chest, trying not to react at all. 

“I mean, all those things you said. Back when you had me and Tommy cornered.” Tubbo is tripping over his words now, trying to catch up with them before they fly away from him, and Dream can only watch mutely, this battered, bruised boy with a golden heart and broken wings, can only watch as he steels himself, tries in vain to figure out why he’s been hurt. “You said you’d given up everything to gain everything, but- you haven’t gained anything. You never were going to, not really. But you- you gave up your friends, your family, your freedom. All for Tommy.”

Dream wants to scoff. Not for Tommy, he almost says, because he refuses to admit to his own attachment, not for Tommy, never for Tommy, but for what he represents. The attachment he represents. 

He doesn’t want to think about Tommy. He doesn’t want to think about any of them.

“I just want to understand,” Tubbo says emphatically, gnawing on his lip, “I want to know where it all started going wrong for you.”

So does he. Closing his eyes behind his mask, Dream casts his mind back to a summer’s day before Tommy. He remembers spending the day with his friends. George. Sapnap. Bad. He remembers the scent of freshly-cut grass, and the cold shock of the water cooling his skin when he’d jumped into the river. He remembers building the Community House, blowing it up, his memories merging into a grey blur that never ends-

Where had it all started going wrong for him? Dream wishes he had the answer.

He swallows convulsively, pushing down his own stuttered explanations and half assed responses. Because he has a part to play, he’s read his own script, he’s the main event, villains don’t get the easy way out.

“Tubbo, I want to change,” he says, voice soft, empathetic, and watches the boy stiffen; jerk to his feet, eyes shuttering, face closing up at the manipulation in Dream’s voice, “believe me, I do. I want to do better. I’m sorry.”

He watches Tubbo, bright, lively, Tubbo, who has grown into a peace-maker despite being a child of war, press his lips together in a tight line. It’s funny: he’s seen this expression before, just before Tommy’s exile, it’s funny: he knows just as he did back then that he’d gotten what he wanted.

“Sam?” Tubbo calls out, voice quiet, sad. “I’m ready to leave for now, I think.”

The prison warden guides Tubbo into the water pit in the corner, and Dream doesn’t flinch when Tubbo shoots him a wary look like he’s going to attack him, because that’s not his role. 

“I’ll come and visit again,” Tubbo offers, and Dream’s _please_ goes silent and unheard, “if you want.”

“Because we’re friends?” He says, just to twist the knife that’s already in Tubbo’s heart, just to ensure he doesn’t come back, because the last thing he needs is someone genuinely caring about him, someone asking him questions he doesn’t have answers to. “Because you care about me?”

Tubbo’s expression almost shatters. He looks like he’s lost something, someone, important. Dream wonders dully who it is.

“Goodbye, Dream,” his little brother says quietly, and Dream is left with nothing again. He’s reminded illogically of a book he’d read Tubbo as a child, reminded of their childhood, the fleeting snapshot they’d had before everything. Because his backstory isn't heroic; he's not a Greek legend. He'd been a boy, once. A man, not so long ago. He doesn't quite recognize himself now, looking in the eyes of his brother and seeing a white mask reflected back.

 _Sic semper tyrannis,_ he thinks, cradling his book, _thus always to tyrants._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yup, i have a headcanon dream is tubbo's biological brother who left him in phil's hands after realising he was too young and inexperienced to care for a child, yup, this made me so sad to write, yup, tubbo doesn't know dream's his brother :') 
> 
> i really hope you enjoyed reading!!! all the comments on my last chapter left me grinning like an idiot so tysm for them all - if you enjoyed this chapter, feel free to leave kudos / comments below :) you guys are the best
> 
> tysm for reading!! comment who you'd like to see next or what you think is going to happen!! :0


	3. icarus' fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dream,” Quackity greets, almost pleasantly, if not for the undercurrent of satisfaction in his voice, “God, you look like shit.”
> 
> Dream manages to smile, docile for now, a sleeping lion - or at least that’s what he tells himself, though it’s hard to believe after his crushing defeat. “Well,” he says reasonably, “I’ve had worse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back to another chapter!! quackity this time - if you want more insight into the way i write quackity's character, i highly recommend my other dream smp fic "speculum", which is a seven chapter character analysis of him over season two!! it's pretty dark, but has a happier ending than this does for him: feel free to check that out and ignore this unhappy ending, and focus on his healing in chapter seven (soon to be published)!!
> 
> this chapter is a little darker: tw for suicide that's not permanent (dream running into lava), temporary character death, and a setback in recovery. stay safe while reading, and i really hope you enjoy!!

It takes him twenty eight seconds to die in lava when he’s at full health, he discovers quickly. Thirteen seconds to die at half health. Three seconds when he’s at half a heart. He respawns in the same place always: it’s unpleasant, Dream reflects, to be jolted out of the clutches of death by a pit of ice water, and he’s permanently too cold, and permanently too hot, which only serves to make his situation worse.

Sam has left him a clock, though - it’s Dream’s latest obsession, his latest toy. He comes to the belated realization that he has a bit of a problem with obsessive tendencies, which makes a lot of sense, in hindsight, though doesn’t actually help him get over it. He holds onto the clock most hours of the day, except when he’s throwing himself into lava or trying to drown himself. He doesn’t want it to get broken, or worse, he doesn’t want to lose it completely. He has so few worldly possessions as it is - he’s disc-less, he’s friendless, and he doesn’t want to be clock-less too. 

The warden of the prison has also taken to messaging him when he’s getting visitors. Dream counts this as improvement, however bland and dry Sam’s messages are on his communicator. Dream watches it sometimes, willing it to light up and buzz with a message, from Sam, from anyone - a _hello,_ a _fuck off,_ a _we miss you._ He’s not surprised. It means he’s done his job well, played his role so convincingly that everyone hates him. 

(It does sting. He admits that to himself, though never out loud. There’s something that hurts about being completely forgotten about, alone and cut off in a dark cell in the middle of an impenetrable prison.)

(He’s never hurt so much before, and he blames Tommy. It’s attachment, foolish, immature attachment that Dream should be better than. If Tommy hadn’t brought attachment, he’d never have ended up in this situation.)

(If Tommy hadn’t brought attachment, the server would have fallen into the grey abyss of apathy before too long. Tommy had been good for them all.  _ Had been, _ key phrase.)

(Dream doesn’t know when that had changed for him.)

In any case, though, when Sam messages him, his heart leaps into his mouth, and he fumbles to pull out his communicator, staring at the message with equal parts dread and delight. 

Delight, because he’s getting a visitor - someone is here to see him, for good or for bad.

Dread, because Sam’s message says **“Quackity is on his way to your cell. ETA five minutes.”**

Oh _fuck,_ Dream thinks, he might just lose another life here if he’s not careful. Because Tommy is a hero and had never been able to take away anyone’s last life - he’d watched the way the kid had trembled when Wilbur had instructed him to take Schlatt’s, knew that he’d never have been able to do it, knew he was too soft - and Tubbo, despite Dream and the world trying to make him otherwise, is kind, so fucking kind, but Quackity isn’t a hero and he isn’t soft and he certainly isn’t kind, not to those who don’t deserve it, not to Dream.

He’d pushed so hard to unravel Quackity’s fragile mental state, but as he’d been surrounded in the prison, in the finale of his and Tommy’s little fight, he’d stared Quackity in the eyes and Quackity had stared right back with a sense of calm victory. He isn’t the angry, unbalanced Schlatt-wannabe that Dream had tried to pull apart. He’s found himself again; he’s realized who he is again, and Dream doesn’t know how to feel about that.

So when Quackity crosses over the bridge, Dream watches him very, very closely. He sees the ex-Vice President’s confident steps and the way his wings are held proud and high and the cold gleam in his eyes that’s not mean like Schlatt, but is knowing and intelligent. Quackity isn’t Icarus, like Dream had told him all those weeks ago; Quackity isn’t Icarus, he hadn’t fallen, he’d  _ risen, _ and Dream hates that he’d been so wrong.

“Dream,” Quackity greets, almost pleasantly, if not for the undercurrent of satisfaction in his voice, “God, you look like shit.”

Dream manages to smile, docile for now, a sleeping lion - or at least that’s what he tells himself, though it’s hard to believe after his crushing defeat. “Well,” he says reasonably, “I’ve had worse.”

“Right,” Quackity agrees, looking around the small cell and turning to watch the lava begin to cover his entrance, “yeah, I was there when Tommy took two of your lives. That must have hurt like a bitch.”

He grins finally, and Dream can see the crooked scar on the right side of his face from Technoblade’s pickaxe, and the speckles on his face from the explosion at the first festival, the Manburg festival. Quackity knows exactly how much it hurts - unwillingly, his hand jumps up to massage his throat, where underneath his hoodie there lay a thin red scar, newly made, still healing. It’s a slow process to scar over, actually, because Tommy had slit his throat after beheading him, and the scars overlaps each other in a painful fashion, and Dream doesn’t think they’ll ever go away, not really. A permanent reminder of his ego, his carelessness.

“I didn’t think you’d come to visit me,” he says, rather than answer what they both knew had been a question into Dream’s mortality, “unless you’ve just come to gloat.”

“I have.” Quackity snorts, stepping further into the cell. Dream resists reaching forwards and ripping feathers out of his wings; there is something about Quackity’s casual smugness that’s unbearable. “I literally just came here to mock you, that’s it, really. Someone had to. Tubbo was crying when he came out of here, so it didn’t exactly seem like he’d come to gloat. He’s the only visitor you’ve had, right?”

“Right,” Dream lies, not thinking of Punz at all, “I mean, I see Sam sometimes, but I don’t think he counts as a visitor.”

“He doesn’t. He’s your jailor.” The amusement grows on Quackity’s face. “I bet you feel like an idiot, all locked up like this. Not exactly in your plans, was it?”

Dream shrugs, refusing to rise to the bait, at least visibly. Inside, he smolders, but he can’t afford to let Quackity see this. The lawyer is smart: he’s incredible at reading body language and sharper than almost any other member on the server. If he catches sight of Dream rising to the bait, it’ll only add fuel to the fire. 

“Well, it wasn’t according to one of my plans. I have others. But this isn’t…”

He thinks of curling up in the corner of the cell, hands fisting in his hair, struggling to breathe through the weight of hopelessness in his chest. He thinks of the long nights he can’t sleep, not because he doesn’t need to, but because it’s impossible to sleep in hell, and because he’s never been able to sleep anywhere other than outdoors watching the stars. He thinks of the longer days without anything or anyone other than the _tick-tick-tick_ of the clock, and how intolerable it all is.

“...It’s not ideal,” he says instead of any of this, keeping his voice steady and nonchalant, “but I’ll be out soon enough.”

Quackity quirks an eyebrow. “You sound awfully confident about that.”

“Well, Tommy wants Wilbur back.” Dream ignores how talking so much is beginning to scrape his throat; it’s been days since he’s last spoken out loud, fuck, is his throat beginning to give out on him? That’s frightening. “And when he wants me to revive him, he’ll have to let me out to get the book and to do the ritual. My freedom for Wilbur’s life.”

“Wilbur’s life for  _ your  _ life,” his visitor replies scathingly, “you’re going to rot in here, Dream. The only reason you’re still alive is because you can bring people back from the dead. You really don’t seem to understand how dependent your life is on your own ability, now - the minute you stop being useful, I’ll personally put an arrow through your brain myself.”

Dream smiles, despite the fact he feels so cold at hearing this. And then he sits back, and he chuckles, and he watches Quackity’s confidence falter, struggling to keep a grip on his face.

“What’s so funny?”

“No, no, sorry,” he apologizes, faux amusement in his voice, “I just- you reminded me of someone I knew once, someone we both knew once. I just wasn’t expecting it. You’re so violent now, Quackity.”

Quackity stiffens like he’s been shot. Dream’s smile splits his lips, turns mean. He’s always been good at getting under people’s skins, especially when he’s cornered and frightened and paranoid. He’s better at playing the villain than some people give him credit for.

“Shut the fuck up,” Quackity says lowly, stepping nearer and pulling Dream forwards by his collar, “I’m not Schlatt, Dream. I’m nothing like him. We’re-”

“Literary mimics,” Dream chips in, “literary footsteps.”

Quackity explodes. “We’re not fucking literary mimics, we're not _literary_ anything, because those don’t fucking exist in real life!” He snaps, as though Dream doesn’t know this, as though the whole story metaphor isn’t just a desperate, last-ditch effort to rationalize his own actions. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you? You think you’re some sort of big villain, the final boss in a fucking video game or something- This isn’t a story, Dream. We’re not characters in your stupid fucking narrative. You’re not the villain. You’re just a shitty person.”

Dream is silent. The clock on the wall grabs his attention, or at least gives him a way out from looking at Quackity instead - over Quackity’s shoulder, he stares at the clock, _tick-tick-tick_ ing away, time passing by at a snail’s pace. It’s not like he’s being told anything he doesn’t understand: he’s not crazy, or at least he’s not delusional, not yet, he understands this isn’t a story. These are real people’s lives he’s playing with, real people that he’s hurting and that he’s ruined and that he’s broken. Tommy isn’t a hero, he’s a kid. Tubbo isn’t a pawn, he’s a kid. All of them are fucking kids, really - none of them much older than their early twenties, but Dream feels ancient in comparison. He’s not a villain, but he wishes he was one, because isn’t it the fact that he’s still human what makes this all the more horrifying?

“So here’s what’s going to happen,” Quackity says, voice low, and he releases Dream’s collar with a disgusted look on his face, “as much as I want to fucking kill you right now, I’m not going to. That would be an easy way out. You’re going to rot in this fucking prison, Dream, because it’s what you deserve.”

Dream laughs, and tries to inject as much humor into it as he can.

“You can kill me too,” he offers, “I’ll just respawn in here.”

And, when Quackity doesn’t react fast enough, staring at him with minute confusion entering his expression, Dream takes matters into his own hands, stepping into the lava that surrounds his cell while facing Quackity. The other’s face grows horrified, disbelieving, when he sees Dream do so, and that’s enough to make Dream grin as he dies. The searing heat is nothing he hasn’t experienced thousands of times since he’s been in here - the cold of the water on his still blisteringly hot skin when he respawns is the worst part. He gets up, shaking his death off, ignoring his hand spasming into a fist at his side.

“See?” He says mildly. “Sam knows what he’s doing. If you want to kill me, Quackity, be my guest.”

Quackity stares at him with an expression akin to horror. “You just threw yourself into lava,” he replies, slightly weakly, “what the _ fuck.” _

Dream cocks his head, like he’s too stupid to realize how messed up that is. “I did,” he agrees, “to prove you killing me won’t get me out of here. If anything, it’ll only hurt me more.”

And here’s the thing. He knows Quackity’s not stupid. He can probably sense Dream’s manipulation a mile off - he had been the one to try and break the news to Tubbo that Dream had been using him, and he had been the first one to put the pieces of Dream’s little game together, and he’d been the sharpest. For a while, he’d been an incredible threat to his plans. But Quackity was, is, fragile. He’s barely recovered from Schlatt; he’s barely started the road to recovery from the bucket loads of trauma he has on his shoulders. Dream had done his best to push Quackity into becoming another Schlatt - it had almost worked. Quackity is right, after all. He’s not Schlatt, nor is he Schlatt’s parallel, because those don’t exist in real life.

But Dream has learned over the years that it’s less about what is real, and more about what you can make people believe. So he leans closer to Quackity, letting his smiling mask taunt the other as much as he dares, and says lowly, “so take your revenge, if that’s what you want.”

And just like that, he sets Quackity’s recovery back weeks, because Dream knows how to pull the strings, and Quackity’s strings come in the form of his dead ex-best friend and President. Schlatt doesn’t need to be alive to cause chaos - he’s resurrected in the snarl that crosses Quackity’s face, and puppeteered in the form of the fists hitting Dream’s body. His mask breaks, cracks, fractures down the middle, and Dream doesn’t care; he’s won, in the end, he’s won this little battle between him and Quackity, and he’s got nothing to defend. He stands there, and lets Quackity kill him, because Schlatt’s temper had been just as hot and as violent as this, and Quackity knows it.

Dream knows he does. He respawns and falls into the water pit again, and takes a beat longer climbing out, lets out a slightly shakier breath than before - not too obvious, but enough that Quackity will pick up on it. He can see the realization dawn in Quackity’s eyes, the violent rage he recognizes from the Butcher Army simmering itself into horror and regret as he steps back. His wings curl around his body like they can shield him from attacks. They can’t stop him from hearing Dream’s words, though. And they’ve always been his most dangerous weapon.

“Did it feel good?” Dream asks, his voice oh so carefully gentle, sympathetic, and Quackity flinches, and doesn’t answer. Instead, he messages Sam on his communicator with shaking hands, and is guided through the steps to leave. Quackity leaves a different person from when he’d entered, weeks of healing and recovery undone by one visit, and Dream doesn’t feel guilty about it, he doesn’t.

Instead of feeling guilty, he pulls off his mask, and stares at the long crack down the middle. It really needs repainted; it’s scuffed and dull and beginning to fade. The crack only adds to its state of disrepair. He hesitates before putting it back on, walking over to his sink and staring down at it. A stranger stares back, scarred and tired and startlingly, frighteningly vulnerable. 

_ Who is that? _ He wonders. It’s not the same person who made Quackity hurt or Tubbo cry or Punz leave, he doesn’t think - the stranger in his reflection looks too scared and desperate for that. He doesn’t recognize them in the slightest. 

He makes a new record of twenty six seconds to die in lava, and doesn’t kn ow whether to feel ashamed or proud of himself.

He opts for proud. Someone has to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!! i hope this made sense - i wrote this sleep-deprived and with a headache wkdblsdf. if you enjoyed, please feel free to leave a comment and kudos; they all mean so much to me and i love reading through them when i wake up!! :D
> 
> ily all and i hope you have really good days!!! <3


	4. purple and grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, that’s right.” Something in Ghostbur’s eyes clears, dawns, darkens. “You hurt Tommy, I remember that. I ran out of blue to give him. He was too sad, I think. What did you do to him?”
> 
> Dream swallows thickly. “What had to be done,” he replies, evenly.
> 
> Ghosbur doesn’t look convinced. “What had to be done?” He asks. “Or what had to be done for your story?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back to another chapter!!! writing this in the middle of watching tales from the smp but i hope it's coherent :] i had a lotta fun writing this - i've never wrote ghostbur or schlatt before so this was interesting!!
> 
> enjoy the chapter <3

Dream can’t escape from his demons, not even in his sleep.

He tosses and turns when he finally decides to lie down and attempt to fall asleep - he can’t remember the last time he’d slept longer than an hour, and it’s driving him quite literally insane. Things appear and disappear in the shadows of his cell, whispering and grabbing at him with inky hands, and Dream can’t control them. In here, he can’t control anything. He can control how he chooses to die (lava is painful, water is slow), he can control what he writes (does he insert himself into a tragedy or a comedy? Does he make himself the hero or the villain?), but it’s so limited from what he’s used to that he wants to scream.

He can’t control people. Nobody has come to visit him since Quackity left eight days ago. 

He can’t control himself. He doesn’t know what the world has in store for him, hasn’t read the last pages of the script carefully enough.

And so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he can’t control his dreams, either, but somehow it is.

Dream stares down at his physical body, asleep in the corner of his cell. The hoodie has always been slightly too big for him, but it’s drowning him now; he’s lost behind the hoodie and the mask and his title. This has to be a dream, because he doesn't believe in out of body experiences, and he can’t have died, he can’t have just had a heart attack and died like Schlatt, because this doesn’t feel like death and because he’s better than Schlatt, so much better.

“That’s pretty fucking’ rude,” Glatt - Schlatt, he’s not calling him Glatt - complains, “I didn’t have a heart attack and you know it, asshole.”

Dream chooses not to answer this. He knows as well as Schlatt that Dream’s very weak access to the controls of the world had allowed him to kill Schlatt without touching him. He doesn’t need anyone else to find that out. 

Schlatt doesn’t look as angry as he remembers him, though; pissed off, as always, but there’s a mellowness to him now, something ever so slightly more peaceful. His tie is crooked and half undone, his hair is ruffled. He looks just like he had before banishment, ram horns grey instead of black, and Dream, not for the first time, wonders if there’s more to Schlatt than meets the eye.

“Hi, Dream!” A cheery voice pipes up from behind him, and Dream feels his heart sink. He can’t deal with this right now - this is the last person he wants to see, minus Tommy. He’d thought he’d never see this particular person again. “How are you?”

“...Hello, Ghostbur,” Dream answers carefully, turning halfway in the air to meet Ghostbur’s eyes, “what are you both doing here?”

Ghostbur looks different too. He’s more transparent than Dream remembers him ever being, and when he floats closer, he can see trails of blue where he’d been before. Schlatt is the opposite; red haunts him, bleeding from his eyes to his tie to the floor, where the red and the blue tint the obsidian a dull purple colour. Dream stares at it for a moment, before he bends down to touch it: it dissipates and turns to ash the moment his finger brush against it.

“We’re just stopping by,” Ghostbur informs him, “I’m here to say goodbye!”

Dream frowns. “Goodbye?”

“Well, Tommy wants Alivebur back.” Ghostbur says it so casually, so easily. Dream swallows, thinking fleetingly of the reason he’s still alive -  _ his life for Wilbur’s life, _ a voice that sounds nastily like Quackity’s whispers in the back of his head,  _ his life for Wilbur’s. _ “And I want Tommy to be happy, so I’ll be going!”

“I stopped by to say fuck you,” Schlatt drawls, examining the cell in mild discomfort, “and to say thank God you killed me before this place was fucking built. I just know they would’ve sent me here instead. This place is a hellhole.”

“That’s not nice.” Ghostbur looks at Schlatt reprovingly. “This is Dream’s home! You don’t have to be mean about it.”

He pauses then, actually taking a moment to look around him, examine the room the three of them hover in. Dream feels something indescribable coil into knots in his stomach. 

“Ah… Where actually are we, Dream? This doesn’t look like anywhere I recognise.”

Schlatt cackles. “What happened, buddy? Get tangled up in your own puppet strings?”

Dream takes a moment to answer, weighing up the pros and cons of being honest. “Yes,” he says, wrenching the word out like a decaying tooth, and it hurts twice as bad, “but it’ll work itself out. Tommy- needs a villain to fight, after all.”

And that’s true, isn’t it? He’s been locked up here for over a month already, nearing two months, he thinks: Tommy can’t leave him in here for much longer. If the positions had been reversed, Dream would have been going stir-crazy with nobody to fight, no rival to mess with, no arch-nemesis to destroy. He wouldn’t have lasted nearly as long as Tommy has. A heaviness enters his chest, settles where his heart should have been. He thinks it might be loss.

“Oh, that’s right.” Something in Ghostbur’s eyes clears, dawns, darkens. For a moment, there is the look of Wilbur dancing like soulfire in his gaze; vengeful, protective. “You hurt Tommy, I remember that. I ran out of blue to give him. He was too sad, I think. What did you do to him?”

Dream swallows thickly. “What had to be done,” he replies, evenly.

Ghosbur doesn’t look convinced. “What had to be done?” He asks. “Or what had to be done for your story?”

_ They’re one and the same, _ Dream thinks, but instead just turns his gaze to the ground, throat too tight to answer.

“Do you regret it?” Schlatt speaks again, and though he doesn’t sound like he cares one way or another, there is something so shrewd and so sharp in his voice that it cuts Dream straight to the core. Out of habit, a hand coming to his chest, he reaches for the mask on his face to adjust it self-consciously, fingers going to curl around the edges-

“Oh dear,” Schlatt smirks, “no masks in dreams, loverboy.”

Dream wants to scream. He fights back tears, fights back rage, fights back every stupid inconvenient emotion that threatens to overwhelm him, and tries not to care. As usual, he fails miserably.

“I’m going to wake up now.” If there’s a shake in his voice, Ghostbur is too oblivious to pick up on it, and Schlatt too smart. “I’ve had enough of nightmares and ghosts.”

“You didn’t answer Blue, Dream!” Ghostbur floats closer to him, face equal parts firm and concerned. “It’s not very nice to ignore other people’s questions. I know you’re upset, but I really do want to know. Do you?”

Any moment now, he’s going to wake up. Dream envisions his body, his real solid body, moving, rolling over in his sleep and waking himself from this god awful dream. As much as he tries, his attempts to reconnect with the form curled up on the floor are futile.  _ Wake up,  _ he begs himself,  _ wake up, end this, you’re being stupid. _

But he doesn’t wake. And Ghostbur is looking at him with such genuine sadness that it makes him want to scream, and the smirk on Schlatt’s face makes Dream want to put a hole through the obsidian, no matter how many bones he shatters in the process. And the worst part is that he has nothing to use against them. They have nothing to attach themselves to, nothing tangible that Dream can touch - and doesn’t  _ that  _ just make him feel worse than powerless?

“I don’t get to regret my actions.” His voice wobbles on a precipice, and he’s reminded of the days leading up to Christmas - he’s reminded of Tommy in the Nether, more defeated and smaller than he’s ever seen him, staring down into lava. Something twists in his heart. He doesn’t let it manifest into guilt. “That’s not part of the character.”

“But it’s part of you, isn’t it?” Ghostbur presses. When his hand touches Dream’s shoulder, his fingers turn grey, and Dream feels static electricity pass into him - when he examines his shoulder, it’s got the slightest hint of blue to it. Not enough, but enough to notice, and Ghostbut sucks in a breath like he’s been killed again. “Oh, you’re so sad. You’ve got so much sadness in your chest. How do you deal with it?”

_ How do you sleep at night? _ Tommy had asked him before, voice disgusted and horrified and so, so angry.

Dream clears his throat, steps back, away from Ghostbur and his blue and his honesty. “Because I have to,” he says, and it’s perhaps the most honest he’s been in forever, “How do you deal, knowing what Wilbur did?”

Ghostbur smiles faintly, a shadow curling into his eyes. “Wilbur died before he had to deal with it. I suppose he’s lucky in that sense.”

It’s not an answer, but it’s a sneaky enough evasion that Dream approves. And, because he has to know, he turns to Schlatt, raising one eyebrow before halting himself sharply. He forgets how transparent he is without his mask on. 

Schlatt guesses his question even before he asks it, and scoffs, sharply. “Dude, I’m not going to encourage your stupid fucking villain redemption arc or whatever. Man up and admit to yourself that you fucked up and start fixing shit, or rot in here.”

Dream, before he can help himself, scowls. “I’m not having a redemption arc,” he replies, brittle and tense, “I don’t even want one. That’s not the issue. That’s-”

He cuts himself off viciously, biting his tongue. The action sends a blossom of pain blooming through his mouth; to his surprise, on the floor, his body shifts, finally rolling over. He watches with Ghostbur and Schlatt as his hand comes up to his mouth, knocking the mask sideways. Dream holds his breath.

“Are you going to fix it?” Ghostbur asks.

Dream swallows, gingerly covers his body’s face back up with the mask. It seems to crack more under his grey, grey grip. Ghostbur steps back, and Schlatt sighs. It feels like he’s failed a test of some sort. He tells himself he doesn’t care.

Schlatt nudges him, sends a splatter of red skittering up Dream’s arm and spine. “So what now, big guy?”

Dream turns his head to the opposite side of the room. He doesn’t speak for a very long time.

_ “It’s not your time to die yet, Tommy.” _

_ Tommy stares at him. His eyes are grey. “It’s never my time to die.” _

Dream heads for the lava with sure footing, and neither Ghostbur or Schlatt stop him. They watch him throw himself in, they watch him burn, and the last thing he sees is the two of them turning their backs to him. From this angle, while he’s this close to death, he almost can’t tell them apart.

He wakes up with a sharp start in his own body and not dead. Sitting up instantly and checking the room for ghosts, Dream lets the tension drain out of his body bit by bit. It had been a dream: nothing real, nothing concrete. A stupid dream, fabricated in his own mind to scare him, to warn him, something.

He doesn’t ignore the purple footsteps on the floor, and the grey smudges on his cheeks like teartracks. Instead, he wipes them studiously, carefully, and writes them out of his story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's the chapter!! if you enjoyed, pls feel free to leave a like/comment - they mean the world to me :] 
> 
> wilbur will be making an appearance in a chapter coming soon: you'll see soon ;) i think i've got most of the characters planned out in my mind of who's gonna make an appearance - it'll probably be about ten chapters long, give or take!!
> 
> tysm for reading, have a wonderful night!!


	5. time boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I miss you,” Karl says, "come back soon.”
> 
> “I’m stuck in here,” Dream says with an eye roll.
> 
> He's given a sideways look. “You know that’s not what I mean, Dream.” His voice is quiet, sombre. “If you don’t come back soon, I don’t want to see what takes your place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KARL JACOBS TIME!! i'm probably gonna write a oneshot about him because his character is just,, so good,, but for now, take this!! in my mind, karl is trying desperately to save his old friend, but every time he goes back further in time, dream just keeps refusing to be saved like an idiot. i love karl and dream in tales of the smp and i hope so badly that they meet each other in the past/future!!
> 
> enjoy this chapter!! no trigger warnings i think, other than a dark future, but please enjoy!!

The time traveller doesn’t announce himself when he arrives. Sam doesn’t either. That’s okay. Dream has been waiting for him anyway.

Because here’s the thing - this is his world, contrary to popular belief. This isn’t Tommy’s world, despite how much it sometimes seemed like it, it isn’t Tubbo’s world, it’s not even his old friends’ world. It had been everyone’s world, at some point, until Dream had realised just how much he’d been pushed aside in his own server, and had started taking back some control. Now, it’s the only thing he has left, and he clings to it like a parasite. It’s his world, no matter what anyone does to him, and he’s not an idiot. Even if he couldn’t sense what Karl is up to, he’d have figured it out before long.

He’s seen the future - some of it, anyway. What Karl doesn’t seem to realise is that the more  _ he  _ sees, the more  _ Dream  _ sees. Whatever Karl is, whatever abilities he possesses, he is still tied intrinsically to the SMP, to  _ Dream’s _ SMP. And Dream knows everything about his SMP - he has to, he tells himself, a good villain is always prepared, a good villain always skips ahead in the script. Karl has shown him the future, or one of the possibilities of it, and he’s not very pleased at all. 

“Time boy,” he greets the moment Karl steps foot on his cell - so help him, it’s been so long without company and he feels himself beginning to slip, he’s missed human company, “long time, no see.”

Karl sucks in a breath through his teeth involuntarily. “So you know?” He prods, sounding nervous.

Dream resists smiling, a bitter, twisted sort of thing, turning to face Karl with the clock clenched tightly in his hands. It’s cracked. How had it cracked? Has it always been cracked? “How could I not?”

The time traveller looks like hell. His hoodie is spotless, clean and undamaged and perfectly intact, but there are singe marks on Karl’s hair and face, streaks of dirt and ash, and his hands are almost as burned as Dream’s are. There is a hollow, hollow look in his eyes that frightens him. The future is a terrifying place, multiple futures even more so, and for a split second, Dream can’t help but pity Karl.

And then the sense of loss of control hits him like a truck and almost knocks him off his feet, sweeping him up in a helpless hurricane. Because despite all his power, all his tricks and skills and hacks, he can’t time travel. 

He’s tried.

But Karl can.

Dream can’t control Time or her bidding. But maybe, just maybe, he can control her follower.

“How many times have you had this conversation with me, Karl?” He asks, and watches Karl’s shoulders stiffen, watches his body tighten.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, come  _ on  _ now. I’m not an idiot.” It almost feels like he’s in control again; wistfully, Dream lets himself lean into the charade. It’ll be taken from him before too long, so it’s nice to pretend for a moment. “I know about your time travel. I know you know exactly what I am. And…” He lets the word linger, hovering between them while Karl eyes him warily. “...I know you want to stop what happens in the future. I bet you’ve had this conversation with me thousands of times in the future. Maybe even in parallel worlds.”

Karl is tellingly, damningly silent. Dream smiles, clasping his hands behind his back, and pushes his advantage.  _ Pawn to E6, _ he’s back in the game.

“You know it as well as I do. In here, I’m powerless, right? I’m stuck.” Admitting that leaves a sour taste in the back of his throat; frowning, he continues on. “I can’t do anything to stop the future. And whatever my methods were, they’re much less harmful than what the future holds.”

“I don’t know that,” Karl murmurs, but it sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself, “if I could be sure, then I’d leave you in here to rot. But-”

“But you want to change the story.” Dream steps forwards firmly, not giving himself any room to hesitate. “You want to rewrite the ending.” 

He meets Karl’s eyes behind his mask. Closer, Karl looks worse - there is a permanent residue of fog in his eyes behind the tiredness and behind the emptiness, no hint of the mischief and amusement that used to dominate his features; he looks so, so old. 

“I want to go home,” Karl says plainly, sincere in his words, “I want to go  _ home, _ Dream, and see my friends, and not have to think about saving the fate of the universe. I want to go home, and remember home, and not have to read back my own fucking diaries to remember.”

Dream has Karl where he wants him. It’s not the nice position he thinks it might have once been. Pushing earnestness into his voice, he asks, “how much do you remember, as it stands?”

Karl lets out an empty breath, slouching against the cell wall. “I remember coming to the SMP. I remember meeting my friends. Quackity. Sapnap.” He falters, eyes misty, clenching one hand into a fist. “I remember you. You’re always, always there.”

He is. He and Karl feel tied together. And he’s been alive a long, long time - longer than he likes to admit, longer than he  _ himself _ remembers. “Am I?” He says evenly. “Always?”

“Always,” Karl says hollowly, “in the past, in the present, in alternate realities and dimensions…”

“In the future?”

A silence. Dream finds himself uneasy. 

“I saw someone who worshipped you.” Karl’s voice breaks into thousands of painful glass shards. “I think that was worse than you actually being there. I’m sure I’ll see you again on my next travels.”

It’s odd to hear this from Karl, even though he knows it’s true. Because Dream had been there in the past, yes, but not as he remembers. He remembers the past as a story; filed away neatly inside his brain that he can browse through for pleasure, because it hadn’t truly been  _ him  _ in those tales. He remembers Cornelius like a grown adult remembers playing house as a child. Dream, as he knows himself, had been born in Phil’s world, he’d created his own SMP, he’d die in it too, no doubt. And another would take his place; another Dream, who would compartmentalise his life and continue his story like there had never been any falter.

But he’d be different. And he is different. But Karl is the same; his old friend Karl, who had once looked at him with such admiration and affection and now regarded him with weary cynicism. Dream’s body is a machine - when it grows old and breaks, another replaces it. But the soul inside it is still the same. 

At least, he’d assumed so. Looking at how far he’s come, it’s hard to believe that.

“What happens to the future?” He says, like he wants to know, like he’s not scared to find out. “What does Tommy do?”

Karl smiles sadly at him. “You’re always so obsessed with Tommy,” he murmurs, “like it’s not you who destroys everything in the end.”

Time stops. How long has his clock been broken for? The show pauses unexpectedly, the audience take a breath, the actor stumbles.

Dream supposes what Karl says makes sense; that it’s his actions that doom the SMP. He’s the villain. But it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. Because everything he’s been doing has been to save the SMP, to save the people inside it - to hear that it’s all for nought in the future leaves a sour taste in the back of his throat.

He swallows, slowly, and tries to look for an angle to manipulate, an angle to worm his way free. He sees many. He acts on none.

“I don’t know how long the future has,” Karl continues in the sudden silence and still of the cell. There’s a desperation in his voice. “Sometime sooner rather than later. Something big is happening, Dream, and you’re at the core of it. I just-”

He exhales, stepping forwards, spreading his palms helplessly.

“You can pretend all you want to the others that you don’t give a shit about them. I don’t care. I mean- I  _ do, _ of course I do, but that’s a whole other can of worms. I know you care about them, Dream.”

“Karl,” Dream says in warning. Karl keeps speaking like he hasn’t heard.

“I just- I need you to think about them. Really think about them. Remember how I used to laugh every time Sapnap spawn-killed you or George? Or when we trapped Sapnap in that box and almost died laughing because of how mad he was?”

“Karl.” It’s slightly more desperate this time, pawn slipping off the chessboard, dagger twisting in his chest.  _ “Don’t.” _

“Remember how much Quackity used to like lying over all of our laps?” Karl pushes, and this must be painful to force himself to remember, must be frightening to discover all he’s forgotten. Dream feels like he’s drowning. “And- Hah, remember when we’d stay up late at night, the five of us, to try and watch the sun set, but he always fell asleep first? And then in the morning you and George would have managed to stay awake, and Quackity would yell at him because George managed to stay awake through the night, but didn’t manage to stay awake when Quackity needed him to go suit shopping with him earlier that day?”

“George hadn’t been sleeping,” Dream murmurs before he can stop himself, “he’d been with me.”

Karl smiles faintly. “He always is, isn’t he?”

Not anymore. The distance between Dream and Karl stretches like a cavern between them, vast and gaping. He wants to turn away, to clutch on tight to his mask and never let go. 

“Remember how things used to be?” Karl asks, small. “Remember when you cared about us without pretending otherwise?”

_ I do,  _ Dream wants to say, but bites his tongue until he draws blood. 

“Think of them. Think of those days when making your choices in the future.” The time traveller glances down to the clock in Dream’s hands, before looking back up, face unbearably, knowingly sad for a second. “I don’t want to have to kill you again.”

“Again?” Dream queries, mouth dry, voice as light as he can make it. Because he’s on one life, and Tommy had killed him twice, and it’s awfully, awfully cold in the room suddenly, which is why he shivers - it has nothing to do with the thought of his old friend taking a life from him in the future, not at all. “Karl?”

Karl steps back, wavering. “Tell me it’s not too late,” he requests, tired, “tell me it’s not too late to save you.”

There are many answers. Dream hates open ended questions; they’re too unpredictable, they’re too incalculable, they’re too impossible to script in his mind. He runs through every possibility in his head until it begins to ache, and finally comes to a decision. 

“Try going back further,” the Villain tells the Traveller, slipping into his role like slipping on a coat, “maybe you’ll find something left to save a year ago.”

It’s the most flippant answer he can give. It’s also probably the most honest. Karl stares at him, devastation wreaking havoc in his gaze for a long moment, before his shoulders slump. Good, Dream thinks, he’s found the real answer hidden in the scripted one.

Because for all Dream knows he’s unsaveable, he’d been different only a few years ago. The boy who had had flowers braided into his hair and the boy who sat up late stargazing with George while the others slumbered beside them isn’t a monster. He’s frighteningly human. Dream won’t let himself be saved - fuck, he doesn’t think it’s possible - but if Karl goes back just a little further…

“I miss you,” Karl says, ducking his head and pulling up the hood of his hoodie, “come back soon.”

“I’m stuck in here,” Dream says with an eye roll.

He's given a sideways look. “You know that’s not what I mean, Dream.” His voice is quiet, sombre. “If you don’t come back soon, I don’t want to see what takes your place.”

The clock on the floor, shattered, ticks once, impossibly. Dream glances down at it, startled.

When he looks back up, the clock is working perfectly again, and Karl Jacobs is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dream's mask is beginning to breaaak :)) it's about time lol, stupid emotionally masked physically masked man, just be honest pls
> 
> i hope you enjoyed!! if you did, please leave a kudos or comment if you feel like it!! seeing all the comments is always so lovely and makes me so happy so thank you so much to everyone who has!!
> 
> i hope you're all well, and that you all have a wonderful day/night. the next chapter is one i'm especially excited to write, so i'll hopefully see you in a day or two max for that!!!
> 
> bye for now <3


	6. slipping through her fingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream's having a bad day.
> 
> When someone unexpected shows up, he begins to have a worse day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back to the fic!! this was,, an interesting chapter to write, haha. pls heed the trigger warnings!! dream is beginning to really unravel now: as you'll soon see in this.
> 
> trigger warnings - derealization, hallucinations, fevers, self-harm mentions, suicide (dream jumping into lava), mental instability, burning/lava
> 
> stay safe and enjoy!! :]

There’s a lot Dream could say about regret. Regret has a lot of things it could say to Dream. The weight of it presses down on his chest when he tries to sleep, making it impossible in the thick stifling heat of his cell, and hangs off his limbs like weights when he abandons his attempts to sleep. He can’t remember the last time he’d gotten a moment of rest, proper rest - every time he closes his eyes, he finds himself jerking back in pain, lava burning his body, half submerged into it. Sometimes he lives, sometimes he dies: it doesn’t really matter, because what really matters is that he has no idea how he keeps ending up so close to the lava, and so he stops sleeping altogether. It’s better that way. He gets too tired to be regretful after a while.

He doesn’t stop finding himself in lava, though. It grows from subconscious to deliberate; Dream’s hand finds its way into the lava one way or another, be it through a sudden jolt of rage or upset, or through the numbness he sometimes floats in, or through curiosity. Sometimes he feels too much and pushes himself in. Sometimes he feels too little and does the same. And, more often than not, it’s about control - controlling who lives and who dies, because at this point, he’s helpless to control the story.

Why he’d ever thought he’d been the author of the narrative he’s ensnared in, he’d never know.

So yes, there are a lot of things he could say about regret.

...There are a lot of things he could say about Puffy, too. A lot of those he couldn’t bring himself to ever say to her face, not after everything. Too much has changed, too much is between them.

She visits him anyway, in the throes of a heat-induced fever.

He’s not very coherent when she sees him, and at first he’s certain he’s hallucinating. It’s a common occurrence now; wherever he turns, he sees the discs, dogging his every movement. If it’s not the discs, it’s just shadows, that cling to his heels and leave him mumbling under his breath for God, for the Devil, for someone who doesn’t exist anymore. So when she crosses over the bridge, Dream can only stare at her drowsily from his slumped position in the middle of the cell, obsidian scorching his back and limbs where they touch the floor, staring at one of the last people he’d wanted to visit him.

Because regret comes to him in the few hours of sleep he catches every week in the form of his mother, and he’s not sure he’ll make it out of this encounter without cracking. Trust her to visit on one of the days Dream can barely hold himself together. Those days are few and far between; though, he notes, they’re getting more common the longer he stays in here.

The Captain looks sad. So, so sad. She doesn’t say anything at first, even when the barrier between them drops. Instead, she approaches the cell, crouches down to his level, kneeling on the ground, and presses a tentative hand against his burning forehead.

Like he’s being held at sword-point, Dream goes still instantly. His body radiates heat, face clammy and eyes dull behind the mask that’s beginning to slip off his face; he’s exhausted, he knows he must look a mess. And he hates Puffy touching him, it makes his skin crawl, because he knows he doesn’t deserve this, knows that Puffy doesn’t deserve this. Her fingers are so soft against his forehead behind his mask, smoothing his hair back from his face without blame, without anything - Dream, just for a second in his delirious state, lets himself drift off into a time when they’d been better, when he’d been better. When he’d follow her around, as a child and teen and adult, helping her with little things. When she’d cook for him, chattering about her day while he’d sat listening as a child and responding back happily as a teenager. When she’d find him after nightmares, scared and shivering, and she’d kiss his forehead, promise him things were going to be alright.

_ Promise me now,  _ he wants to beg, but the words stick in his dry throat and behind bloodied lips, _ promise me I’ll be okay again. _

“Oh, duckling,” Puffy murmurs finally, voice full of something terrible, something miserable, “oh, what have you done to yourself?”

And Dream thinks those are the words that breaks him: it’s such a stupid little nickname, such a stupid little sentence. This whole thing is stupid, because he has no attachment to Puffy - doesn’t care if she lives or dies, that’s what he tells himself - but for some reason, the words make his throat ache with unshed tears and make his eyes throb with the same. He says nothing, but the slump of his shoulders speaks for him.

Puffy lets out a dry little sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. In either scenario, they’re both awful to hear. “I’m not here to lecture you, if that’s what you think,” she continues, quiet, “I think you know exactly what you did wrong, don’t you? I’m just here to- here to-”

Her fingers actually sizzle when they come into contact with the ground, and she hisses in pain, sticking them into the water beside Dream instinctively. Dream watches her blearily, head full of clouds. There’s an odd sort of haze around his visitor, a golden halo that frames her face; and then he realizes no, it’s not a halo, it’s the lava, blurry and unfocused in his gaze. This is no place for Puffy. This is no place for anybody.

...He’s not just anyone, though. He’s more important to the story than that. Or he had been: Dream wonders who he is now, now that his story has finished. Now that the Disc Wars are over. He has no hope of getting out; knows he’s stuck here, at least for years. Where does that leave him? Is he dragged into a new story, forced to play the same role? Or does he get a different role now - a hero, maybe? An innocent?

Or maybe he’ll get no role whatsoever in this new chapter. 

He finds the thought of anonymity a blessing.

“How can you just sit on this?” Puffy asks him, hugging her hand to her chest and studying him with surprise. “It burns me even to touch it.”

Finally, a faint smile drags itself out of Dream, and he lifts one hand to show his guest, who sucks in a breath at the sight. Over the hours, days, weeks - God, how long has he been in here? - his body has stopped automatically healing the damage done through constant exposure to burning alive and drowning. His hands suffer the most; he’s forever dipping them into the lava, watching with distant agony as his hands burn and scar and scream in pain.

“Mmm.” His voice is a lot hoarser than he remembers it being; he clears it, trying to sit up a little straighter. “It does burn.”

“Dream,” Puffy says, anguished, and there’s so much pain in her voice that it hurts  _ him _ to hear it, “oh, baby.  _ Dream.” _

“It’s okay,” he lies, “I’m treated well. Sam- Sam gives me food and makes sure I’m not going crazy. It’s okay.”

And now it’s funny - the audience would laugh in normal circumstances, are probably laughing, because he’s about to - Dream has no idea why he’s lying to protect her from the truth. Lies exist for manipulation; only a few weeks ago, he’d concocted plan after plan to play up the awful conditions for pity points. This is the perfect opportunity for that. Now? Now, all he can feel is his mask slipping from his face and the sickening constant nausea that comes from being locked up in Pandora’s Box. Everything blurs together, day and night and day and night and hour and day and week and fuck, he’s getting motion sickness. 

“I’m okay,” he says again, because he has to, because he needs to believe it, because Puffy’s eyes are filling with tears, “I’m okay.”

And then-

“I’m- I’m really tired, though. ‘S hard to sleep in here sometimes.” Dream swallows. “It’s loud.”

Puffy doesn’t even consider that she’s being manipulated. Dream knows she knows him too well for that. She smooths his hair back again, an unconscious habit, and Dream leans into it, unconscious, and for a moment, beautiful, unconscious, they’re younger and happier.

And then the heat and the deafening silence and the painful obsidian rushes back to him, and Dream stifles his moan, pressing his ruined hands against his mask and trying to block it all out. Puffy retracts her hand from his forehead - Dream almost sobs, until he remembers his role and what part he plays - before shuffling to sit beside him, gently resting an arm around his shoulders.

“Aren’t you scared?” He whispers, like right now he’s capable of hurting anyone.

Puffy doesn’t answer for a second, and when she does, her voice is soft. “Scared for you, duckling. Not scared of you.”

Dream goes to protest, goes to pull away, but he’s so, so fucking tired. His eyes throb in pain, whole body leaden and melting. “You should be,” he confesses, “I want you to be.”

“You won’t hurt me.” Puffy threads her fingers through his loose, long hair. Dimly, through a layer of exhaustion, he remembers her cutting it for him after a manhunt, snipping away long locks until he’d been happy with it. He wishes she could do that now. “You didn’t hurt me then. You won’t hurt me now, I know.”

He struggles with this for a second, struggles to break through the fog and focus on before the prison. That version of him had been someone else entirely; angry and desperate and full of hunger for control, power, victory. Dream hungers for something else now; he’s satisfied with every human touch he gets.

“Try and sleep, duckling,” Puffy continues, gently easing Dream’s head on to her shoulder, “you look like you need it. Just shut your eyes.”

Dream does so without complaining, heat fogging his head, and she chuckles softly, squeezing his shoulder. “Will you be here when I wake?” He asks, almost inaudible. 

_ Darling, _ Puffy says soothingly,  _ I’m not even real. _

Ice runs through Dream’s veins, jerking him awake again. “What?” He breathes, turning to face her searchingly, refusing to believe her words. “What do you mean, you’re not-”

Nobody’s there. Breathing harsh, erratic, Dream scrambles to his feet, staggering and almost falling in his effort to stand as quickly as possible. There’s not a single person in his cell. This doesn’t make any sense. He’d felt her hands, felt her holding him. It had been so real. 

But he can’t deny the facts: he’s alone in this cell, and has been for days and days. Burying his head in his hands and letting out a soft, pained noise, Dream moves forwards on autopilot, not stopping even when the familiar burning pain licks up his body and he respawns in water. He continues, stumbling into the lava like it’s his job, like it’s not Sapnap that had been born in fire, like lava hadn’t terrified Dream for years until it had become a companion.

_ He’s okay,  _ he’d promised the Puffy in his mind, and he hadn’t lied. Nobody needed to know about his lapse in character. Some mistakes happen backstage for nobody to see: nobody needs to know how close he’d been to shattering only moments before.

**[ Dream tried to swim in lava. ]**

**[ Dream tried to swim in lava. ]**

**[ Dream tried to swim in lava. ]**

Sam watches the messages appear on his communicator chat, again and again, the first message lost among the dozens that follow. Puffy watches too, eyes red from crying. He doesn’t ask what had happened in the cell. That’s not his job. All he cares is that he’d gotten Puffy out of the cell after Dream began running into lava -  _ with Dream, you never know when the violence will turn from internal to external,  _ he’d said to her when she’d first emerged, sobbing over the shell of a boy she’d once known.

“I don’t understand,” Puffy whispers, “I don’t understand what went wrong. He was fine until he started falling asleep.”

Sam doesn’t try and psychoanalyze Dream anymore. Pandora’s Box isn’t fit for anyone. Dream is bound to unravel at one point or another. All gods break in the end.

“Sometimes he has bad days,” is all he says, leading her out of the prison, away from Dream, “and sometimes he has worse days than others.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :') this one made me pretty sad to write, ngl,,
> 
> we're getting into the second half of the fic now!! it's only gonna be about 7/8 chapters more at most - i'm interested to see what ending i'll come to!! i have a few in mind: i'll see which ending fits best and solidify it soon >;)
> 
> thank you so, so much for reading!! if you enjoyed, pls leave a kudos and comment - it means the world to me and really makes me smile. thank you so much to everyone who's already done so!! you're all awesome :D
> 
> follow me on tumblr for writing updates - @dreamsclock !!
> 
> tysm again, ily all <3


	7. chekhov's gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, well, well,” Wilbur purrs when he finds himself back in his body, stretching until his back cracks, “the all-mighty, powerful Admin. Look what’s happened to you.”
> 
> Dream smiles around a mouthful of blood. “Hello, Wilbur,” he says evenly, like he doesn’t want to kill the man in front of him with his own two hands, resurrection be damned, “welcome back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAH WELCOME TO THE HARDEST CHAPTER I'VE EVER WRITTEN, AND THAT'S SAYING SOMETHING :'0 i dunno why i struggled so much to write this LMAO, it took me two days which is longer than any other chapter (usually i write them in one sitting) but it's finally finished!! i'm not the proudest of this chapter, but i hope you enjoy it anyway!! :D
> 
> wilbur finally makes an appearance, and he and dream have a loooot to talk about :) i really enjoyed writing these two, and might make a oneshot centring them because i find their dynamic rlly interesting!!
> 
> enough of me rambling LMAO, please enjoy the chapter!!

His name is Dream, and he’s real. 

His name is Dream, and he’s real. 

His name is Dream, and he is… 

Reality isn’t the same in his world. He remembers creating the SMP, remembers, with a pang, how he’d wanted it to be a playground for him and George and Sapnap.  _ “A place,”  _ he’d laughed long ago, _ “we can do what we want.” _ A place where he could live forever with his friends, gods in their silly little summer world: things had spiralled so quickly out of control, leaving him struggling to keep any sort of grasp on the little power he had left. A place he’d watched others ruin and destroy until he actually paid attention and found it had been his own hands destroying it all. When had that happened? When had he changed?

Dream exits out of his fever after five days, give or take. He only knows this by the amount of potatoes that have been left for him - three per meal, fifteen per day, seventy, so it must be lunchtime on the fifth day, or thereabouts. He gets his theory confirmed when Sam enters his cell, mask on, eyes hard, and asks what he needs to resurrect Wilbur. Groggy, still exhausted from his illness, Dream requests extra time, just a day, a night, to recover.

“No rest for the wicked,” Sam says, “up you get.”

Stuck between obsidian and a harder place, Dream gets to his feet, staggers, and begins to rhyme off the things he needs. It’s all he can do. The show must go on, no matter the wreck it leaves its actors.

Sam comes back with the items in less than an hour, and Dream is still shaky on his feet. Now that the fever’s passed, he’s feeling a different kind - cabin fever, going stir crazy from seeing the same three walls and the same lava fall. Or maybe he’s already gone crazy - he hasn’t forgotten his hallucination of Puffy, hasn’t dared ask Sam if she’d visited. He doesn’t want to give into his own deluded thoughts. Instead, Dream begins to arrange the items, methodical, automatic, because otherwise he’d have nothing to focus on other than the way his hands tremble and the fact he feels a lot weaker than he ever has before and the way deep down he misses Puffy’s hand touching his hair like she’d cared.

It’s hard to feel like a villain locked away in here. It’s just as hard to feel human. Dream feels like a caged dog, unable to do anything other than snarl - lately, it’s been hard to even do that. He’s so tired of real life. Immersing himself neck deep in method acting until he’d become the villain had been so, so much easier. 

He swallows down his silent protests, and does as he’s asked. He guesses he owes Tommy this, at least. He’d done a good job of playing hero, no matter how much Dream resents him.

“Well, well, well,” Wilbur purrs when he finds himself back in his body, stretching until his back cracks, “the all-mighty, powerful Admin. Look what’s happened to you.”

Dream smiles around a mouthful of blood. Reviving the dead isn’t as easy as it sounds, and that’s saying something. “Hello, Wilbur,” he says evenly, like he doesn’t want to kill the man in front of him with his own two hands, resurrection be damned, “welcome back.”

Wilbur looks around the cell, disdain and amusement curling into thinly veiled contempt in his grin. “So much for being at the top of the food chain. So much for being a god.”

Dream had dreamt of godhood once, in the same way Icarus had dreamt of the sun. Both had ended the same way. Only Icarus is free of his shackles now, free from his tower - Dream is stuck here for the rest of his long painful existence, born and reborn inside this prison, with no hope of escape: it hurts to think about. 

He tells Wilbur none of this. “Well, things didn’t turn out quite how I hoped they would,” he admits, head throbbing, “but it’s not as bad as it seems. Really.”

A lie through his blood stained teeth. It’s amusing to him, in a twisted sort of way, and it seems to amuse Wilbur as well, who chuckles. “Not as bad as having my sixteen year old brother beat you?” He asks, and there’s twisted mirth layered under his words. “I’m sure that wasn’t in your script.”

“Getting your own dad to kill you was a nice touch in yours,” Dream returns, because Wilbur is the only person who truly understands his line of thinking, the only person he knows who has a script pre-planned in his head for every possible event, “was it always in there, or did you improvise the moment he appeared?”

Wilbur chuckles, crouching down to his level and wiping blood from his chin. Dream thinks he must have bit his tongue through when he’d revived the other. “I’m a man of drama, I am,” is all he says, assessing Dream with a critical eye, “you haven’t learned a single thing while I’ve been gone.”

“And you have?”

That’s Dream’s way of asking a lot with a few words - he asks what Wilbur remembers, what he knows about death and life and everything in between, he asks a silent  _ how does death feel?  _ and mutters a defensive  _ I’ve learned more than you  _ in the same breath. It’s emotional,  _ human, _ and Wilbur picks up on it instantly. He moves back from Dream, eyes cooling, freezing into something a lot more bitter, a lot more promising. 

“I’m not an amnesiac anymore, if that’s what you’re implying,” Wilbur says, almost placidly, a wolf in sheep’s skin, a madman wearing the coat of a brother and a son and a musician, “and I want you to know I watched every little thing you did to Tommy.”

Something shifts in the room. Dream’s breath catches, even as he pushes himself laboriously to his feet. Though he’s taller than Wilbur by an inch, Wilbur’s presence fills the room a lot more threateningly than his own does. Wilbur’s teeth are sharp when he smiles, and Dream thinks that he’d been arrogant to call himself a dog chained up -  _ Wilbur _ is the dog.  _ He _ is the frightened rabbit, running from danger, from safety, from life and death and heaven and hell. The manhunts of his youth only proved that; had he ever really stopped fleeing? Had he ever really stopped feeling pursued? He can almost feel the hunters’ weapons trained on him, can almost feel the scratches of tree branches as he leaps through them nimbly. 

“Then you don’t need to ask why I’m in here,” he says, forcing it out through a dry mouth.

Wilbur’s eyebrow raise is practically predatory. “No. I don’t. I’ve seen every little thing, Dream. Everything” He tilts his head, just a little; nauseous, Dream copies him. 

And it’s then he realises there’s no mask on his face, and that Wilbur really can see everything.

Panic. He’s the rabbit again, caught in a trap he’d been too focused on running past to see, desperate to run and unable to do so. There’s nowhere to run in Pandora’s Box - he’d ensured that himself. Stumbling back, automatically turning away, Dream covers his face, breathing ragged. It had slipped off during the ritual; he’d been too dazed at the time to fix it. Eyes clenched shut, as if he’d see his own reflection in the water of the cell, he fumbles about for his mask, desperate, clutching on to the one piece of control he had left.

Something breaks behind him. Shatters into two pieces. Dream doesn’t need to be a genius to know the noise had come from Wilbur.

“Whoops,” Wilbur says, entirely unsympathetic, “I think it broke.”

“Give me my mask back.” If Dream sounds devastated, it’s because he is. Damn the show, damn the act - he needs his mask. What is he supposed to do without it? “Wilbur-”

Shards are pressed into his hands, and Dream’s heart plummets to his chest.  _ No. _ No, this can’t be happening. He turns away from Wilbur, from the world, and inspects the state of his mask. Like he’d assumed, it’s in two pieces -  _ oh, _ he thinks, irrationally,  _ Bad is going to be so sad. _ He’d been the one to make this mask, had painted the smiley face and presented it proudly to Dream as a birthday present. And Dream hadn’t cried but Jesus, he’d come the closest he’d come to doing so in forever.

He feels that same burning sensation in his throat and eyes now. It’s not out of happiness this time.

“See, here’s the score, Dream,” Wilbur continues, and Dream can’t even turn to face him to glare or sneer - can only cover his face with his broken remains of his mask, “if you lay a finger on Tommy when you get out - and I know you will get out, one day - if you even look in Tommy’s direction when you get out, I’ll destroy more than your mask. You understand that.”

It’s not even a question, that’s the chilling part. Because Dream knows Wilbut Soot, and he knows he’s not asking at this point. He’d seen everything - the exile, the manipulation, the framing and the destruction and the living fucking hell he’d put through Tommy through, and though Ghostbur had been too innocent to do anything, Wilbur has blood on his hands, and Dream knows his blood wouldn’t dirty them much more.

“You understand that,” Wilbur says again, lower this time, tighter, “because otherwise I’ll burn everything else to the ground to get you to understand.”

Dream finds his voice. “You don’t have the power.”

“I have the  _ willpower. _ That’s enough.”

It’s true. He looks to the floor, looks to the sky. Both are unforgiving. “I’m not getting out anytime soon, Wilbur. And when I do, I don’t plan on…”

Doesn’t plan on what? Dragging Tommy down his self-destructive path of hero versus villain? Dream doesn’t continue his sentence, and Wilbur doesn’t ask. Both of them know that he has no idea where he’s going, with the sentence or with his future when he gets out.

_ If _ he gets out. If. Judging from the fact he knows exactly what safety measures have been put in place, he doubts he’ll ever manage to escape. The only other hope for him is that someone comes to let him out. Somehow, he doesn’t hold much hope there either. Sam wouldn’t come close to the idea, and he doubted Tommy would either. With a little manipulation… Maybe, if he said the right thing…

But his script has run out of pages. He’s off-book now, and not in a good way. Improvisation has never been his strong suit, and it’s so, so obvious the longer he spends in this place. Because his mental script had taken into account a lot of ideas, but not this one. 

Wilbur hums, beginning to pace like he’s relearning how to walk with a physical body. It’s an incredibly self satisfied sound. “Whatever you do or don’t plan on doing, you’re going to leave Tommy out of it,” he says, voice low like someone cares enough to listen. Dream responds by scoffing, trying to hide his vulnerability. With his back to Wilbur, he feels exposed, helpless - he could have his last life taken, and he’d have no way of knowing until it was too late. “I’m not the man I used to be, Dream. Tommy is the only person I have left. If you hurt him...”

“What about Phil?” Dream asks, half mocking, hackles raised. “You can’t have forgotten about your father who killed you.”

He doesn’t have to be looking at Wilbur to know the man is narrowing his eyes at him. He knows the expression too well. “Phil,” Wilbur says firmly, “has Technoblade and Ranboo. You’ve made sure Tommy has almost nothing and nobody.”

That’s true. Dream swallows, daring to turn back around and hope his face is covered with his hand and the shattered remnants of his mask. Through the cracks, he can see Wilbur studying him with a candid look in his eyes, coat ragged and ripped. 

“Do you understand what I’m saying, Dream?” Wilbur asks, very deliberately. 

He presses his lips together tightly for a second. “Yes,” Dream says, after a pause, “I think I do.”

“Good! Good man.” And Wilbur’s suddenly all smiles again, crossing his arms and adopting a far more placid look on his face. “I think I’m going to go, now. I have a brother waiting for me outside. Family. Friends. Do you remember having family and friends, Dream? Or are you too deep in your character for you to admit you miss them?”

“I miss them.”

It’s torn out of his throat before he can stop it; Dream stops, struggles with himself. Wilbur cocks an eyebrow - he’s surprised, which is something, at least, surprise is good, it means Dream hasn’t lost all of his old bite. But admitting to missing the people that had once cared about him has ripped something loose in his chest. Miserably, Dream thinks this is what grief feels like. It’s funny. He’d never given himself a chance to grieve for all he’d lost before. Now he’s stuck in here, he’s got all the time in the world to grieve. 

“Who would’ve thought it?” Wilbur asks wryly. “Not so much of a big bad villain now, are we, Dream?”

Dream can’t respond. He turns away again, heart in his throat, heart on his sleeve, heart shattered like his mask, and stares at his clock listlessly. It has to be broken. The hands are unnervingly still. Wilbur sighs, saunters to the water respawn site in the corner, gets in casually. Dreams watches him in the reflection of the clock. Former hero, former villain, both of them in a cell. It’s unfair, he thinks, childishly, because in the end, which is which? Which of them is the former hero, which is the villain? Hadn’t they both been heroes once? Hadn’t they both become villains?

(Which poses the question: who are they now?)

“Goodbye, Dream.” Wilbur tells him, rather cheerfully. There’s a hint of satisfaction in his tone. “I expect I’ll see you again. Would you like me to visit again?”

Dream thinks of George and Sapnap and Bad and how none of them have visited yet. “Yeah.” His voice is quiet, but Wilbur looks surprised. “If you want.”

His rival exhales, and for a fleeting moment, almost looks like he pities Dream. “Write yourself a new script,” he tells him cryptically, “or learn how to live without one. All this literary stuff? It’ll destroy you in the end, if it hasn’t already. Believe me.”

Chekhov's Gun hangs between them, unspoken, unsaid. There had been a reason Dream had given Wilbur that TNT. Both of them are on the same level of understanding.

“Goodbye, Wilbur,” Dream says, and waits until Wilbur is gone before pulling the mask from his face. It really is broken; there’s no turning back now. He stares at the shattered pieces in his hand until the pale white mingles with the red on his hands, until his eyes start to burn and his mind finally grows numb.

A new script, Wilbur had said. Write yourself a new script.

Dream crosses over to his table, quiet, unsure. He opens a book. Writes his name. 

_ Scene One. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there we have it :DD i rlly like the ending of this if not the middle, so i hope you did too!! if you did, please feel free to leave a kudos and/or a comment - they always make my day, they're free, and you can always unsubscribe, blah blah (i mean you can't take back a comment bdfkgfkbkdfj, don't mind me stealing dream's yt channel intro)
> 
> thank you so so much for reading!! can anyone guess who's visiting dream next?? 
> 
> stay safe, i love you all, and i'll see you in chapter eight in a few days!!

**Author's Note:**

> hopefully the next chapter (along with a lot of my other fics' chapters LMAO) will be out tomorrow!! pls leave kudos and / or comment if you enjoyed - tell me what characters you wanna see next!! i'm willing to write pretty much anyone lol
> 
> thank you so much for reading <3


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